But unfortunately for the rest of you, Mike Cule said "Tell me more, tell me more!" So I will.
Our gaming group was looking for something new to do and a fresh GM, so I said I'd run a Gloranthan campaign. Five players: one plays in the same campaign as me on another evening, so knows something about Glorantha, one last saw Glorantha through RQ2, two had never heard of the place and one had barely role-played before.
They fell in love with Ducks. "Glorantha - that's the place with the Ducks, isn't it?". OK. So I'm having a mixed duck/human party. You may remember my asking for advice on ths one, and ending up with a Lismelder clan as a result. They're all about 15, as I'm doing the usual thing of starting them off with initiation. The guy who knows most about the place has a very very pious character whose aim in life is to be a Hero-Priest of Orlanth, preferably before he's out of his teens: so he can lecture the others and stay in-character.
All was going well, except that one of the players didn't quite catch on to the clan ethos. He kept trying to make a profit out of the rest of the clan, the rest of the players, anything that moved. By cheating, if need be. OK, so his background indicated some Issaries tendencies, but this was ridiculous. So I thought I'd make a virtue out of necessity, and remembered some things we'd said about involuntary initiation a while back. A local spirit who happens to also be a Trickster acolyte took an interest in him. It would appear in some animal form or other (hare and magpie, so far), and offer to help him out in exchange for a favour that would involve stealing from the clan, or otherwise harming them. He got sucked in deeper every time, of course, and has had most of the Trickster aspects demoed on the way.
Now, when I'd told the others how as part of their initiation training they were being taken out on long runs round the clan lands, to make sure they knew the boundaries and to build up strength, they acted out the aches and pains and demanded CON training. Fine. Tony (the challenging player) asked for details about his instructor and how he could be blackmailed into letting him off lightly. The instructor in question is the Sword we mentioned earlier: the senior Humakti in the clan, and not to be taken lightly by anyone.
I won't go into full details, but with a bit of help from the spirit a very convincing bit of framing was set up. The Humakti, sworn never to touch alcohol, has been seen by several witnesses assaulting a female trainee while very drunk. He is no longer training anyone, and the clan awaits the arrival of another Sword with relevant truth magic to find out just what was going on. Not that the kids are being told this, of course!
Once the Truth comes to light (and it will), I think that Sword is going to be rather annoyed. This is where I have my very pious PC primed to apply a Bondsmans Oath a second or so before the Trickster dies. (The rest of the players know nothing). I think you're right that the Sword will hesitate before slaughtering a fifteen-year-old, especially the Orlanth priest's prize pupil. But I can see the clan coming up wth all sorts of excuses to get the players away from home for a bit, sending them on quests that would normally go to more experienced people, just so as to keep the Sword happier. (Some resentment of my Orlanthi kid, too. "If he think's he's that good, let's see him prove it"). On the whole, this looks like MGF possibilities.
Oh, and just to add to the fun, the position of Clan Champion around here is currently vacant. Competition for it was based more on politics than combat ability, so this will no doubt have some interesting results.
Meanwhile, back at the main plot, the PCs have done their first HQ.
And done very well: I was proud of them. I'm making initiation a thing of
three parts. You do three HQs, to prove:
1) you're a Vingkotling/Herotling, and an adult (in that you're willing and
able to take responsibility for your own actions)
2) you're an initiate of Orlanth or of Ernalda (this bit is gender specific,
so will be two quests with the "wrong-gender" players running NPCs for
each one)
3) you're a member of this clan: in fact, of this bloodline.
Quest 1 is the Second Son bit. Go west (admiring the HP and its spirit population and unusual lighting), meet the Second Son, get advice from him (as discussed here a while back), then help defend his stead when it gets attacked. Throughout this quest the world gets gradually darker, and towards the end the edges of reality are getting closer. By the time they're fighting, each defending a gap in the palisade, they each have their own tiny universe to defend. (Yep: IFWW). They each get given the opportunity to run away, and all of them took Second Son's advice to never give up. Just as each of them is overwhelmed by Chaos and Darkness, the sun rises, Chaos flees, and they're miraculously a) healed and b) home.
Quest 2 will be the Initiation of Orlanth for the blokes, and something I haven't yet tied down in detail for the women.
Quest 3 is simply being taken by an adult of your bloodline to be presented to the clan/bloodline founder. Ancestor-worship rituals, and so on. I may ask them to re-enact the problems the clan had to face in settling here: no, not just fighting zombies. Each bloodline has its own specific magic for dealing with the Marsh: they'll be taught it by the clan founders, and then invited to use it.
On top of this, I have to think up what the Trickster Spirit is going to ask the Duck to do for an initiation quest. On the whole, I think stealing a sword and presenting it to an Orlanthi could be quite amusing: let's keep this as mythically resonant as we can! Quite how I get my Orlanthi to attempt the Yelm Contests I'm not sure. Just finding a Yelm rep. to be the opposition could be tricky.
OK, enough on HQs. You can wake up again, and let go of the Down key.
That Orlanthi player has been asking me about elementals. In particular, it seems to him that this business of Summoning them and giving them orders is a disrespectful way of treating the representative of his God. I can definitely see his point, but all I know about them is the RQ3 Roolz. Anyone got any suggestions?
Jane Williams jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/
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